Will MH17 be our 9/11? (22) The Sovershenno Sekretno documents and the investigation by Josef Resch

In the previous blog I recounted the contents of the four documents published by the Russian magazine, Sovershenno Sekretno. We have to be skeptical in a propaganda war in order not be taken for a ride by one side or the other, but the contents chime with my own suspicion that NATO and/or the Kiev regime, i.e. the anti-Russian party in Ukraine, must be considered the prime suspects in the downing of MH17.Proof of course is a different matter. For even if the West and Kiev have exploited the downing to bolster their campaign against ‘Putin’ to the utmost, we still cannot be sure that it was not in fact done by the rebels, or that it was a mistake by one of the parties, and so on. So now let me compare the documents to the findings of the German private detective, Josef Resch.

In document 4 of 28 July the SBU command gives the instruction to rotate the personnel of air brigade A-4101 of Chuguiev, besides other replacements, in order to remove all traces of an air force operation on 17 July.

At the air force base of Chuguiev in Kharkov (Kharkiv) province, some 20 km south-east of the city of Kharkov, civilian radar allegedly had been switched off for planned maintenance on the fatal date of 17 July. The final report of the Dutch Safety Board on p. 38 states that three civilian radar sites had been switched off for maintenance, but this was only true for Chuguiev—one other station (Artemivsk) had been damaged in the fighting and the third one was too far away. Dnepropetrovsk Air Traffic Control radar too was not functioning. Military radar had been switched off because there would be no air operations that day. Of course, for those who know that air defences in Ukraine had been put on maximum alert on 12 July (which was still in force on the 17th), all this sounds most improbable.

At any rate, what happened in the air space between Chuguiev, Dnepropetrovsk and the area where MH17 was brought down, was never registered by Ukrainian radar. This particular triangle comes under the Air Command 'Centre' (the others are West and South, including Crimea). Various units that have been mentioned in connection fo MH17 such as 156 anti-aircraft regiment (Buk), also belong to it. The Command deploys 16 MiG-29 and 42 Su-27 (pictured), both supersonic jet fighters, but not at Chuguiev. No regular air force units with combat tasks are stationed there. ‘Air brigade A-4101’ is a strange reference because it does not sound like a regular unit. The 4101 is a particular version of the Antonov-26 (An-26) transport plane, which have their home base there as part of training centres based at Chuguiev: Kharkov Air University, 203 training brigade, and a training centre for non-commissioned officers. In addition there is the ChARZ maintenance and repair plant.

In his memoirs, Josef Resch devotes one chapter to MH17. He was tasked with tracking down whistleblowers who could earn the unprecented bounty of $30 million if they proved who downed the plane, or an additional $17 million for documents proving who had tried to suppress evidence. Resch found a candidate for this latter amount. The German detective therefore knows which party has systematically obscured evidence although he is not entitled to disclosing that information.

Resch was also visited by a Russian interested in the main premium. This whistleblower was not accepted by the anonymous client, possibly because he gave as the motive, an attempt to assassinate Putin (whose plane passed over Warsaw half an hour after MH17 but then continued in the direction of Moscow). However, Resch and his team, which included a Russian translator, considered the other documents that the Russian handed in, most convincing. They documented that an ‘Su’ (type not specified) arrived at Chuguiev airforce base on 15 July (Su-27 and 24 are supersonic jets, the Su-25 is meant for ground support and too slow). This plane had to take the place of one of the planes slotted for operations on the 17th and was instructed to destroy an airborne target in the triangle Snizhne-Torez-Grabovo. A Buk unit (which must have been part of 156 AA regiment) had to provide cover, but it did not fire a missile.

The Russian informant also disclosed that all pilots at the base had been rotated to other locations and that one intelligence officer was killed outside the combate zone. This last detail comes close to what happened to sergeant ‘Vyacheslav’ (document 2 of Sovershenno Sekretno) and it was of course the order of the SBU on 24 July 2014 (document 3), as was the rotation of all pilots (3 and 4).

Again, this whistleblower was turned down by the anonymous clienut, but not by Resch who published a part of the documentation in a German translation, complete with the blackened passages which would have been replaced by the original documents had an OK been received. Incidentally, Resch is so critical about NATO that one may conclude from it that he suspected the perpetrators in that corner. Also, the fact that two weeks after the downing of a Russian passenger plane over Sinai at the end of October 2015, he was approached by the Russian FSB to track down the perpetrators of that act, ponts in the same direction, but he preferred to retire.

In July 2016 the retired investigator actually received one of the documents now published by Sovershenno Sekretno: document one, about 'Katsap' (a derogatory term for a Russian). Resch considered this an authentic document and handed it to German law enforcement. One year earlier, in an interview in the Daily Telegraph, he stated that he hoped and expected that the anonymous client would make public the information obtained. If all the documents of Sovershenno Sekretno are authentic, this would now have happened, albeit through another channel. At any rate we are getting closer and closer to the real course of events.